The First Months
by NekoMarik
Summary: This is how werewolves in my universe get during their first months of being affected with lycanthropy. This was more character and situation layout, so it's sappy and embarassing.


_This is embarassing. It's character layout paired with my taste for sappy emotional scenes like the ones in the naime that people deplore but that made me cry. _

_There are some things you might need to know so you can understand the following passage. In my view, during the first eleven months or so of being a werewolf, there are stages to pass through. Yes, like puberty. Actually, puberty gave me the idea. Anyways, silver stops the werewolf from transforming into a wolf at the full moon, but the silver will feel cold. (Nothing can stop the first transformation, and after the first transformation, the tail doesn't go away- it stays, even in human form. And different werewolves have different fur.) In a new werewolf, the silver won't keep the inner animal-hunter mind at bay completely. At random intervals throughout the night, the werewolf will suffer sudden attacks of an intense need to hunt and kill, and the human mind will go away, to be replaced by an animal's mindset. It's semi-traditional. So in my story, the werewolf wears a silver chain and pendant, but since it doesn't keep him from getting violent, they have to restrain Yugi. Don't accuse me of being melodramatic- look at the freaking anime or manga for that.  
_

"The _forecast: a car crash. It's looking like another breakdown, rebound_…" Boys Like Girls, singing "Up Against the Wall," lilted from the stereo.  
Jonouchi sighed. Oddly appropriate for the current situation. It looked like any minute Yugi was going to have one of those random spurts of sudden, oddly strong and slightly spasmodic struggles as the inner beast fought for control and to kill. The car crash. They all knew what would happen afterward: Yugi would then practically drown in despair. The breakdown. Then he'd come out of it and try listen, more or less, to his friends and family tell him he wasn't a monster. That was the rebound…sort of. But then he would have a relapse, and the sudden hunger for living meat would take over. Repeat until dawn, when the moon's magnetic pull lessened enough for Yugi to be normal…ish.  
Jonouchi turned from the stereo to the almost unbearable sight of Yugi lying next to him on the couch. He was covered in cold sweat from dread and from fighting back the mounting desire of the beast within. His blonde bangs stuck to his face as he twitched restlessly from side to side and he struggled to breathe because of the intense strain of the anguish in his mind, plus the penetrating cold of the silver as it permeated to his core. With his eyes closed, he looked hopeless, lost, forlorn and forsaken. With his eyes open as they were now, he looked either like a desperate man seeking help when near death, or as though he was about to be killed by someone he had trusted infinitely. (That wasn't an exaggeration- he'd already been killed once, emotionally, by Duke.) Jonouchi's hands balled inadvertently into fists at the thought, but then stretched in anxiety as Yugi's fingers scrabbled at his side and his feet kicked. He was so short that even though Jonouchi sat on one end of the couch at Yugi's feet, his feet were still a good inch away from Jonouchi's skinny legs. He strained against the ropes that bound him from upper arms to his ankles. He dropped his head back and sucked in a trembling breath. The sight of Yugi so helpless made Jonouchi feel as though it was his fault- restraining Yugi had been his idea.  
On the other side of the couch, Shizuka got up and walked over to the stereo. The phrase "_breakdown, rebound_" had provoked the same train of thought in her as in her older brother, and she had no desire to listen to that lyric again- it was the beginning of the song's chorus. She took out the CD, wondering why she hadn't ejected it when as soon as Good Charlotte's "Misery" had come on. After replacing the CD in her friend Kurisutaru 's CD case she turned and trotted back to her place on the chair beside the couch. (If you noticed it, you're right- I did worm myself into the story.)  
"…_and I/ can't deny your eyes…who said that it's better to have loved and to have lost?/ I wished that I had never loved at all_…" the words stirred in Yugi's mind just before the touch of the eject button cut them off. A thought began to form, contemplating the lyrics, but a sudden shift in his mind-set and inner demeanor cut off human thought and feeling.  
Yugi's head lolled back, his purple eyes rolling back in his head until only the whites were visible. When they rolled back into normal position, the pupils were wide and crazed- like those of a starving, savage animal set on hunting down prey in order to tear it apart before devouring it. He began to struggle violently. He bared his teeth, and his sharp, pointy canines scintillated in the living room's light as he let out a savage, bloodthirsty snarl. He pulled his head back and gave a howl full of cruelty, savagery, and hunger. Around him Duke, Anzu, Shizuka , Jonouchi, and Honda looked away uncomfortably. All of them got up to pace agitatedly, restlessly, staying in the room but looking anywhere except Yugi. His grandpa had said he was going to sleep (Yugi's friends had offered to watch over him so the old man could get at least a little rest), but they all knew he was probably wide awake, stressing over his beloved grandson's condition: how to control it, how to keep it secret, how to stop him from hurting others…how to keep him safe.  
The violent struggles, the snarls, and the howls continued, growing more frantic as the minutes passed. Meat, food, blood, carnage. These were the pictures in the werewolf's mind. Compassion, emotion, pity, feeling…these were incomprehensible in the mindset of a perpetually hungry, sadistic animal. The fight for food grew worse, madness controlling the beast. The food in this room would be empty prey- if he could only get free. The struggling and the barks and howls intensified until they finally fell and gradually converted into odd, spasmodic spurts of noise and movement, squirming and whimpers. Yugi's waning strength gave way, and his humanity came back in pure exhaustion. His thoughts picked up where his real mind had left off, on the lines "…_and I can't deny your eyes…who said that it's better to have loved and to have lost?/ I wished that I had never loved at all_…"  
His friends' distressed glances, the way they avoided his gaze during the animal insanity, told Yugi he was a beast in their eyes, and he couldn't deny those gazes, despite the fact that their providers refused to acknowledge facts they already knew. Sometimes he wished that his mind would stay in animal form, just so he couldn't come back to the awareness of being a monster, so he couldn't feel the stress it caused him, never think about the guilt he felt for having his friends stress themselves over his well-being, so he couldn't come to the remorse and regret for any attacks he'd made. He sucked in some air, knowing he was a monster, letting his head roll to the side.  
He'd released even more perspiration during the madness; he closed his eyes and rubbed some of it off into the blanket thrown underneath him for that purpose. Anzu knelt next to her friend, knowing his dejection and the self-loathing he felt. She ran her hands gently through his hair and whispered quietly into his ear that he wasn't a monster. Yugi shuddered, bit his lip, and shook his head in disagreement. He opened his eyes and whispered back that now he could never be anything but a monster, then closed them again and turned to the other side, arching his back because he needed to stretch and couldn't. Anzu got up, threading her hand through a lock of sweaty blonde hair. Jonouchi came and sat on Yugi's other side, in Shizuka 's chair. He said nothing; only laid a hand on Yugi's forehead. His best friend's breathing steadied slightly, and when he got up, the others used their own methods to ease his self-rejection enough to make him at least believe he could be a little bit human. They knew he would be brought back down, but even the shortest time Yugi spent in self-repulsion hurt them. Otogi got up, took one of Kurisutaru 's CDs from the stash Shizuka had borrowed, walked over to the stereo, and popped it in. He skipped forward until the opening notes of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart"- just what they needed. Otogi turned and smiled without feeling to back it up. Yugi smiled just as emptily, as did the others. But the song comforted them, and they played romantic ballads from the 80s and 70s the rest of the strenuous, repetitious night, even through the random attacks of insanity Yugi suffered.


End file.
